


Storm days

by imsfire



Series: Post-Traumatic [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodhi Rook (mentioned) - Freeform, Cassian is a survivor, Depression, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Jyn (mentioned), K-2SO (mentioned) - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Mental Health problems, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Acceptance, Survival, and increased self-knowledge after years of living with this, difficult but hopeful, learning to cope with lifelong mental health issues, things can be hard but he has family and friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian Andor has learned to live with the fact he will never completely be free from his past, and the mental health demons the war has left with him.  Things can still be hard, and there are bad days, but the more time passes, the better he gets at recognising the warning signs, and working his way through.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Post-Traumatic [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847857
Comments: 18
Kudos: 37





	Storm days

**Author's Note:**

> For Cassian Appreciation week on tumblr. This works for both Thursday and Friday's prompts; "Fragile" and "Fallout".

For the rest of his life there are the storm days, days when Cassian feels himself breakable. It seems like a kind of justice, each time it happens; the one who broke so much, who ended lives, betrayed trust, left innocents behind, himself now breaking, broken, wind-wracked. All he is, is ruins, ruins that once were homes, under a sky of thunder, under rainstorms and gales.

The ruins loom over his future. He pictures rubble crumbling slowly in the wind and rain, or dashed to the ground in a hurricane. He knows, days like these, that one day the whole wreckage of him will crash down, and this time there’ll be no-one to pull him out. Doesn’t wonder; _knows_ it.

None of them can help him. He knows that too, when the storm comes. Not Bodhi, not K-2, not Jyn. Just the ruins of Cassian Andor, spy and murderer. No family, no precious children, no friends, no home. And of course no will in himself, to live when his life is what it is. What it has been. Breaker, killer, betrayer. It seems almost a necessity that he too should crash and fall.

And he tells himself. Tells himself he knows, he also knows, that it isn't so. Everything he ever did was necessary. Either unavoidable, or demonstrably the most logical choice, among a galaxy of bad options, unjust decisions. Everything he broke was a necessity. Many of the killings were deserved; many, richly so. Many times, the betrayals were of those who served nothing but self-interest or outright cruelty. Many of his hardest decisions had been the most pure; strategic, practical, logical. And always for the greater good.

Wrong deeds for the good of others. He reminds himself of that. The greater good. Sometimes it’s enough. What was his one life, beside the lives of billions? How could he in good conscience ever have chosen differently? – how could he have refused those missions, those requirements, and the burden they leave? 

Sometimes it’s enough, and the storm abates. The sense of shipwreck, the breaking of the broken, recedes.

On the other days, the worst storm-ruin days when his skin feels fresh-bruised and fragile at the slightest touch, he learns to move slowly. Think, act, be, slowly. Look no further than now. Learns to see one task at a time, one moment, one goal. Basic functions; food, hygiene, clothing, the few words of explanation his family need to hear. The medication his breaking soul tells him is pointless. He swallows it anyway. An open window, a glass of water; find another task; make the toast, eat the toast.

Capture the beetle, let it out of the window. Put socks on his feet, then shoes; venture outside, walk in the air. Let time pass, keep focus on now and the light on the trees, the breeze, the insects and birds calling.

Kay compiles a data file of puzzles for him every few months. This is a bad day. Identify it as such. Go to the dresser, pull out the pad, pull up the newest file. There are brain-teasers based on words, colours, symbols, maths. On days when the storms are outdoors as well as inside him, a cup of caf and a couple of puzzles becomes his go-to trick to help the time pass and keep himself focussed. It quietens the whirlpool in his mind, the storm which could wreck him, suck him down if he lets it. 

Let his brain focus, let it glide over matching matrices or joining dots, solving mazes, arranging the same nine letters in a block of squares.

Then find another simple task; small, useful, ordinary. Trim the fingernail, check the rain gauge, mend the shirt.

He keeps his eyes, his mind, his hope, bent on these small things, so the hurricane cannot overwhelm him, the ruins cannot crush him. 

Once upon a time, when he was a soldier in a war without end, he had to keep himself focussed on details in order not to fail in his work. Now he trains himself to bring the same attention to his own survival. Notice when the bad days come, discipline himself to follow the tricks that hold that storm at bay. The ruins, the storm, the gale of doubt and hate, all hush for a time in the lull of this mindful mindlessness. Caf for alertness, a word-game for calm, a torn hem to be re-sewn. 

Then they creep back. They whisper. Remind him of old truths, things they will not let go; truths he must never forget. Truths he must remind himself are lies, each time. Lies, they are lies, they are always lies, but they whisper, whisper, nonetheless.

Those who love him do not deserve to have to deal with this (whisper, whisper). K-2 shouldn’t feel tied to him, should feel free to take a job with the legislature, or to travel to interview veteran droids for the book he’s writing, his history of their war. Bodhi shouldn’t be obliged to call when his life has taken him so far and into such freedom. Whisper by quiet whisper, suggestive, sly, infiltrating. Jyn and the boys should leave, they should find someone whose mind isn’t doomed to this cycle. This darkness that will never really end, this storm-wind that can only ever abate for a while, and will always blow up again. They shouldn’t have to put up with him, they deserve better. 

Whisper, whisper, tiny invidious drops of doubt.

Another small task. He prunes the vine that is forever trying to swamp the fruit tree. Clip, clip, pull down and clip, gather the clippings and go on. Monotonous, meditative, useful. The sound of the shears and the rustle of reluctant leaves and fronds can muffle the voices whispering at him (in him), telling to hear them, hate himself.

He’s noticed that the dark days come in patterns. That the patterns intersect. The cycle of the seasons, and that of anniversaries official and unofficial. There are days of remembrance in the calendar, observed throughout New Republic space, and days of private memory, when he knows what he did that day, what he can never undo. The sense of his own emptiness rises in the sea of these memories. And winter is always worse, with days that are literally dark, with winds that mutter and damp that seeps inside his much-mended bones. Then too, there’s always a greater chance of pain when he’s alone. Like today. When Kay is travelling, when Bodhi can’t visit for a while and Jyn is accompanying the boys on a school trip to the coast or the city. The days they’re all away, no-one can give the lie to the whispers - no-one but him, himself. The doubts emerge from him, and he must put them back. 

He can’t tell Jyn and Kay and Bodhi that; they can’t be put in the position of having to build their plans around never leaving him alone. It’s been so long since he was deemed a suicide risk, he can’t allow them to feel they have to live that way again.

Or is that the self-doubt again? He pulls at it, examines it as best he can by the unsteady light; shakes his head, reminds himself to do the work of examining these thoughts later, when they aren’t trying to take charge of him.

He washes up the dishes. Folds up the laundry.

Remembers there are two pills to take with the midday meal; finds them, puts them on the side of the plate. 

Make a sandwich, eat the sandwich, take the pills.

Pick up that dust bunny he’s spotted lurking behind the ‘fresher door. How does the house (the whole world, his thoughts whisper, the whole doomed damned galaxy) how does it get so dirty again, every time?

He feeds some of the vine clippings to the nuna in the garden. The rest to the hogs. Checks the water trough, refills it. Scritches each hog in turn on their spiny backs while they grunt in comfortable appreciation.

If he looks at the ruins, if he lets himself feel the gale or listen to the voices, this whole edifice he’s built since the war will totter, it may even fall, this lived-dream of a life and a home, of friends and love. It totters, it reels, he knows it can never stand. The prospect hurts, of facing this onslaught of doubt, year after year, this needling and nagging that never goes away. The blackest storm yet. He remembers what it is to go under in the face of that, to feel that despair close over his head and drown him. The scars on his body aren’t all from the war. He remembers trying to die. The numbness after, and the pain of having to go on living. 

Remembers with a conscious will, that friends, and love, and home, came back to him, have always come back to him, just as he did for them. 

Sits at his desk, transcribes a month’s data from his wildlife observations. Then another month. Makes a snack. Another cup of caf. 

Now go for today’s walk, take your pad, make today’s observations. Water level, weather conditions, what is in leaf, in bloom, in fruit. Afternoon sunlight in the treetops, frog-hoppers along the creek. Invertebrates singing and darting, flickers of bright wings, busy freeway of wood ants going back and forth. First wild tang-berries ripening.

It’s just a day. One day. The darkness recedes in the face of mundane hope, of hoppers and green leaves and homely things. The bad patches have happened before, and as this day’s darkness slips into perspective, the possibility of it happening again becomes bearable, manageable, unremarkable. He’s lived through worse, he’ll live through this. And through it all again, if he has to. 

Putting his knowledge to his own service; his resolve, his ability to press on through, no longer weapons of the rebellion but the tools he uses to serve his life. His family, his friends, his home, his love. They need him, he needs them. He can’t let the storm days of depression win, not when all Palpatine’s navies couldn’t beat him.

And it’s just another day. Not a joyful one, not when he’s alone and having to push through a bad moment, a streak of bad moments, but still; just one day. And before day’s end, he’s out of the worst. Tomorrow will be better, may even be a day full of light. He’s alive, and will see it, and he’ll live what it brings.

He makes tea. Blesses the knowledge he has, and the ability practice has given him, to recognise those first signs, the warning breeze before the hurricane, the first tremor, the shaking of the ruins.

He prepares salad. Cooks beans. 

Light the lamp, put up the bug screens in each window. Watch for the family, listen and watch, for their warm rough laughter, the light of Jyn’s hand-torch. Footsteps coming up the garden path, happy tired voices.

Cassian goes out onto the porch, to welcome them home.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't had to live through the traumas Cassian endures, for which I am very grateful; but this story does draw on on my experience of depression and the lifelong process of learning to live with it.


End file.
